Pam Golding Hospitality Reviews Hotel Industry Trends in South Africa

Feasibility Studies into Africa
As one of the prominent consultants for feasibility studies and advisors for the development and viability of new Hotels in the region, PAM GOLDING Tourism and Hospitality Consulting is currently busy with studies for hotels in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Angola, Nigeria, Cameroon, and a pipeline of projects in numerous other Sub-Saharan Countries.
Government of St Helena Island has been instrumental in advising the Government of St Helena Island, located in the South Atlantic Ocean and being an official Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom, on their tourism positioning on the back of the imminent opening of the International Airport on the Island. PAM GOLDING Tourism & Hospitality Consulting has provided guidance and advice on the Tourism Growth Plan of the Island and has completed various reports and studies for the Government of St Helena.
South African Hotel Industry
The South African Hotel Industry, being the more concentrated and influential part of the overall Sub-Saharan Hotel Industry has been through extremely turbulent times over the past four years.
While the industry now finds itself in a substantiated recovery phase, the effects of the accelerated growth in inventory based on the bullish trading environment leading up to 2008, together with the Global Financial Crisis that started in the same year and the subsequent recession in South Africa the following year, exerted extremely difficult trading conditions resulting in the substantial contraction of the trading environment.
However, with the hotel industry now in recovery, how far has performance improved towards achieving pre-crisis trading levels and what still needs to be achieved towards achieving the trading levels at which the viability of especially the increased inventory was evaluated.
Occupancy
Occupancy has reflected marked recovery with the overall Industry and especially the Grade 3 level sustaining this recovery over the past two years. Occupancy at Grade 5 is lagging at 58.1% while all other levels are nearly at 60%.
Occupancy has recovered across all levels to above 2009 levels but, apart from Grade 4, remains over 10 percentage points below the peak of 2007-2008, the bullish platform on which much decision for the introduction of new hotels would have been based.
Recovery in Rate invariably lags recovery in Occupancy. Apart from 2010 when the FIFA 2010 World Cup afforded advanced rate optimisation opportunity, the previous peak ARR (Average Room Rate) was achieved in 2008.
Currently, ARR has surpassed the levels achieved in 2008 across all levels. How this however translates into the needs to be evaluated through the analysis of RevPAR (Revenue per Available Room), as this combines Occupancy and ARR and is the critical performance indicator in the Hotel Industry. For the complete review visit